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CHURCH GIGS FROM HELL STORIES

#41
Some of these stories are great. Hate to get OT but I guess I should be grateful my bass gets pumped in the mix and no issues at my church. And by the way, we have earplugs back by the desk when people enter the auditorium. It can get that loud.
 
#42
Heres one from my early day's; I and my keyboard playing buddy had hooked up with a group lead by a couple,the wife had been a member of a seminal female gospel group who's other members had all went on to greater success,the husband was the male soloist/manager. We were young guy's (17-18) happy to play outside of our home church. What we didn't know and soon found out was that their marriage was in name only and they fought like cat's and dogs most of the time. Rehearsals were spent listening to them argue about any little thing,her lighting up cigarette's and cussing the husband out. The funny thing is when it was "Showtime" they would become the most loving couple you ever saw. The wife also smoked a ton of weed,which at the time blew my 17 yr old mind having been warned against such thing's my whole life. One gig we did i watched the wife threaten a minister with a pistol unless he came up with all their agreed upon money(which he did LOL).

Actually I'm glad that I learned at a very early age that what or who someone say's they are and who they really are can be two different things. I learned that some people are performers and some people are ministers and to pay attention to the difference
 
#45
Wow, there's alot of church angst here. Church gigs always have the potential to be a crapshoot. Luckily with a church gig, you can usually step down when the frustration gets to big. Though it sounds like a few folks here need to step down for a little breather.

My sin was dissobedience.
A friend of mine asked me to play with his band for a branch of a church I used to attend. It was a sunday evening young college service and they loved energetic worship.
When I showed up, they had a 1x15 stack and a 2x10, but it was faced backwards and not miced. I was turning the stack around when the pastor mentioned that they usually face it backwards. I'm not sure what came over me, but I treated it like he had told a joke and cheerfully said. "That would be stupid". I don't remember saying this, but according to the worhsip leader who had invited me apparently the pastor walked off and I played with the speakers out.
I've played hundreds of worship gigs, and I have to say that it ended up being a great medium-high volume worship experience that the congregation really enjoyed (and told my friend so). Apparently the pastor and the two older couples didn't, as a month later the format was swithed to all acoustic format, and My friend and his band stepped down from that particular ministry.
 
#46
LedBelli Bass said:
Yesterday during rehearsal, just for fun (my cabs are mike'd --- this is a big auditorium), I turned my stage level down to as low as I could go and still be able to hear myself play (barely), just to see what the soundguy in question would do. Then, during the break, I went back and took a look at the board.

Just as I thot: The slider was at negative infinity; the bass level was OFF. The bass level was OFF. OFF! IT WAS F&&#@ING OFF~!

Not to worry . . . I didn't say a thing to the soundman, who was suspiciously asking me what I was looking at! :hiding:

So, for the subsequent two services, I let the SVT-4 Pro and my Berg Cabs BREATH. I let them BREATH. I LET THEM BREEEEEAAAAAATH! That's bridged watts into 4 ohms. You could see eyeballs in the front 4 rows go wide! :p

And then I listened to the "sound" man bitch the rest of the day! It felt so good! :D

Gawd it was good!
Click to expand...

I have had this exact experience. And I am not surprised to discover it is so common. In my case, out went the BX-100 and in came the SVT and two 4-10's.

I don't play in worship bands any more.

-- Dan --
 
#47
LedBelli Bass said:
So, for the subsequent two services, I let the SVT-4 Pro and my Berg Cabs BREATH. I let them BREATH. I LET THEM BREEEEEAAAAAATH! That's bridged watts into 4 ohms. You could see eyeballs in the front 4 rows go wide! :p

And then I listened to the "sound" man bitch the rest of the day! It felt so good! :D

Gawd it was good!
Click to expand...

lol, that sounds funny in my head. I know you mean "breathe", but reading "breath" is funnier. :)
 
#54
I was in high school, and had been playing bass for a while, in HS jazz band, etc.I forget whether I was playing professionally at this point. My church was having a "Carribean"-themed vacation Bible school that year, and had asked my family to play something "Caribbean-style" at the beginning of the week, on Sunday morning, as people came in. My father was a professional musician, and a music teacher, so naturally, all four of us kids had to play music. It was the middle of summer, so it was REALLY hot. We set everything up, (me on bass, my dad on guitar, my younger brother on drumset, and my sisters and mother on flute and vocals. My dad made us play "Latin" versions of all of the traditional Sunday School songs ("This little light of mine", the "B-I-B-L-E", "Jesus loves me, this I know", etc.), which really meant I had to play a root-V pattern with dotted quarter / eighth notes. He wouldn't let me turn up (it would over power the lyrics - no mics), so my fingers hurt from straining to play. We were right at the front door too, so EVERYONE who came into church that morning saw us. To top it all off, I was a fat kid, with ill-fitting clothes, which really increased the humiliation. All the kids from youth group walked by & had to make a comment while I was playing, but the icing on the cake was when the Youth leader came over, made a huge show of digging a quarter out of his pocket & tossing it on the pavement in front of us & walking away without a single word. I was SO mortified - I don't think anything could have topped it. Fat, sweaty, at church, not being able to play how I wanted, too low of volume, friends comments, etc.

Another time, also in HS, I was playing in a trumpet trio (at church) where I had the lead part. Apparently I did not put the valves back in properly when I oiled them (I had been playing for ~10 years, and was pretty confident in my valve-lubing abilities). The piece started & I got the traditional raspberry sound. I immediately had to open up & check ALL 3 valves, which, in my haste to get it done during the song, I managed to mess up again. I finally got it right about 2/3 of the way through the tune, and jumped back to where I was supposed to be. The other two guys (also in church & HS) continued to play the harmony parts, which was interesting to say the least. The service was also being recorded for radio broadcast at a later time. A real win by me. For the gear-conscious, the trumpet in question was a Bach Stradivarius Model 37.

ian
 
#55
I've had my few church worship team battles, but I think my worst experiences as a christian doing contemporary christian music was outside of the venue of the church. In other words I've been in a few christian rock bands scince the mid 70's, and it was interesting at times to say the least.

One of my least fond memories was being in a christian rock band back in the 80's and being booked to play a certain town in Iowa by two hyper fundamentalist brothers that couldn't get it through their heads that we were a ' Christian Rock Band'! We told them so up front, and the demo tape we sent in the promo pack, along with our mission statement as a band, should have made that clear! Well, they ended up booking us as a regular Gospel act, and needless to say, it did not go over so well with the folks that showed up to hear us, and that's putting it mildly. The two self righteous promoter/ bretheren got into a shouting match with a few of us after the gig, and they even went so far to write letters to a few of our pastors, as we went to different churches, in order to inform them as to how we were the servants of the infernal one himself, blah, blah, blah, etc. Amazingly never have I had any non christians abuse me during my christian rock days, quite like I received from some of my fellow christians over the years. This wasn't the only negative thing I've experienced, but it has taught me to brush off the small stuff.
 
#57
LedBelli Bass said:
For about 6 months now, I've noticed the woman who runs the Sunday School side stealing lots of looks my way.

You know the looks . . .

Yesterday was the most obvious. :eek:

And she was sitting with himself . . .

We've never actually met (big mega-type church).

What should I do? :scowl:
Click to expand...

I've been playing bass or guitar in church off and on for 30 years now (i am OLD), but I always thought "getting lucky" at church meant someone was taking you to a buffett afterwards...

My stories are not near as colorful as most on here. Most churches i've played at ran 200-500 in the congregation. However, at one that only ran about 65, the worship leader was wife to the pastor. Her voice wasn't bad, but her timing was. She would slap her leg black and blue trying to speed us up, slow us down and speed us back up again, all in the same song. Then she would ask, why can't you guys play the same speed the whole song?

At my current church we have two services on Sunday mornings. The second service is the one that is usually full... We always try to start the first song strong, the others kind of flow together. On this particular day, first service worship was great and we had the songs down solid. For second service, the drummer counted off and we all started perfect. Then before the end of the first bar, a wall hanging behind the drummer came down and hit him in the back/head... It's this weird thing, about 4' high, 18" wide and a couple inches thick. It HAD to hurt, but he never missed a beat. I walked around behind him while still playing and leaned it back against the wall. The song was fine, but at the end, everyone was still laughing.
 
#58
So I went to this church back when I lived in Honduras (I was in highschool at the time). It was a pretty big church that also ran a TV station. All the services were broadcast live and rerun throughout the week. Now, I don't think the worship team as a whole was good enough to be put on TV, but we were anyway. I was the only one in the group who knew any theory or anything about music really. Especially bizarre were some things the keyboard player (RIP) sometimes did. For example, whenever we were going to put a new song together, he would tell me the key (just the root really, no indication of major/minor mode) and nothing else. He would then start up the song without any preparation (he used the keyboard's rhythm tracks sometimes) and expect me to follow. One time I asked him to count the song off because otherwise I wouldn't know the tempo. He counted "one two three" and then started, but he didn't count in tempo or anything, he thought it was like starting a race or something...
And then there were prayer vigil. I'm not a night person, at all! I've never been good about staying up all the way through prayer vigils. This one time I was so sleepy (it was around 2 in the morning already) that I started falling asleep as I played. Keep in mind, this is being broadcast live! Finally the pastor just told me to go find a couch and sleep. Some people can be really religious though, and say stuff like if you don't stay awake it's because the devil owns you or stuff like that...:smug:
 
#59
Wow, it really seems to be a sad state of affairs out there. Playing at my church is fantastic. We're continuing to improve the sound. I get compliments (ego massage) regularly. There's a new guy with some music connections that came up to me a couple Sundays back after the service and offered to give me new strings. The timing is perfect -- my DR coated are rusting (I don't know how that happened). I'm getting those this weekend. Now he's asking if I could use a bass preamp and telling me makes in the $500 range. :)

Sure there's been pressure, even hostility unfortunately, and for a while I had to run the show (sideshow - not the main service), but when I stand on stage and see people singing to God from the heart ... :bawl: It's all worth it. My booming seems much less important.
 
#60
Playing in church a couple weeks ago (we play a contemp. service once a month) and the guitar player's monitor amp was picking up the local classic rock FM station. It wasn't all that loud when the service was in progress. But, when the congregation all got real quiet during a prayer and the Pastor paused for a "moment of reflection" the Twisted Sister - "We're Not Gonna take It" kinda blew the reverent mood. We all started looking around to figure it out and could not stop from laughing. Oops.
 

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